November 21, 2018

A couple days ago, I attended a fun event, the Season 8 kickoff and Tri-State regional competition for Speed Rack. Speed Rack is a timed and judged bartending contest, intended to raise the profile of female bartenders and raise money for breast cancer research. Sponsors, typically spirits brands, pick up all the costs, which lets them pass on all proceeds to charity. Each sponsor gets a table in the ballroom, and you can sample their spirits, try their cocktails, and pick up branded swag.

Four Roses is Speed Rack's bourbon sponsor, and it was a highlight to swing by their table. They had a large-format cocktail served in a punchbowl, their "Lawrenceburg Cooler" — you can see the recipe by clicking the picture — which was good but a little unbalanced as served here. (The recipe seems good but perhaps their proportions were a little off when they were scaling it up.) I also got to try their Single Barrel expression; more on that later, but first a note about Four Roses' unique system of labeling, and their various recipes.

Unusually among the big bourbon distillers, Four Roses has been pretty transparent about their process. Some of the distillers won't talk about their "mashbills" — the recipe that outlines the proportions of grains that make up their whiskeys. Four Roses does. And all of the distillers are very careful about their yeast, often maintaining proprietary strains and constantly testing them in the lab to make sure the flavor of the distillate doesn't change. What makes Four Roses' approach unusual — besides their candor — is that they use two different mashbills and five separate proprietary yeast strains, for a grand total of ten different whiskeys that they distill. (They also use single-story rickhouses to age the barrels of whiskey; most of the other big distilleries in Kentucky have enormous multistory warehouse buildings.)

The company uses four-letter codes to denote the ten separate recipes. The first letter is always "O", which is a code for the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. (The distillery plant itself was built in 1910, shut down for Prohibition, and re-opened in 1933 as the Old Prentice Distillery. The "O" dates from the days of Seagrams' ownership of the distillery, and is how they used to refer to the Old Prentice Distillery.)

The second letter indicates which mashbill they used. Four Roses has two mashbills, "E" and "B." The "E" mashbill consists of 75% corn, 20% rye, and 5% malted barley, and the "B" mashbill is 60% corn, 35% rye, and 5% malted barley. (Most bourbons have around 8-10% rye, and generally anything over 20% is referred to as a "high-rye" bourbon. Therefore, all of Four Roses' bourbons are high rye by definition, lending them a definite spicy zing.)

The third letter is always "S", which stands for the kind of whiskey this is: straight whiskey. This is a legal definition; in Title 27, Chapter I, Subchapter A, Section 5.22(b)(1)(iii) of the Code of Federal Regulations, the feds define "straight whiskey" as whiskey created by distilling a fermented cereal grain mash to a spirit that's not more than 80% alcohol by volume, and then aging the spirit for at least two years in new charred oak barrels at an entry proof not exceeding 62.5% abv. Coloring, flavoring, or diluting with anything other than water isn't allowed under these regulations either. Most American premium whiskeys are straight whiskeys; blended whiskeys are explicitly something different (though they usually contain straight whiskeys), and when you see the word "straight" missing from a label, that's your signal that it's likely either a blend or that it hasn't been aged the requisite two years in new barrels. (Or has been flavored.)

The fourth letter indicates which of the five proprietary yeast strains — V, K, O, Q, or F — was used to ferment the mash. According to the company, Yeast V gives a "Delicate Fruit" note, K is "Light Spice", O is "Rich Fruit", Q is "Floral Essence", and F is "Herbal Notes."

All ten of these recipes are blended and bottled at 80 proof to create the flagship Four Roses Bourbon (often known as Four Roses Yellow Label). But wait!, you say. Didn't you say that blended whiskeys aren't straight whiskeys? True. A whiskey that's sold as a "blended whiskey" is usually 20% straight whiskey and 80% neutral grain spirit. Boring. They're basically whiskey-flavored vodka. The ten-whiskey blend (sometimes whiskey people will use "melded" or "married" to avoid the B-word) can still be called a straight whiskey because it's entirely made up of straight whiskeys distilled in the same state. As this exhaustive infographic from Four Roses a few years ago indicates, the flagship largely rests on recipe OBSK, with the other B-mashbill yeast variants, and recipe OESK, with the other E-mashbill yeast variants. I think this is a very good house high-rye bourbon to have on hand, and it's usually a shockingly good value for money.

Single Barrel is where it can get interesting. As whiskey is both an industrial and an organic product, you can have some real variation between barrels; the wood, the location in the rickhouse, the age, the weather all can contribute to how a whiskey ages. When you're mixing lots of barrels together for consistency's sake, you can iron out any rough spots, but if you're bottling everything from one barrel, there's nowhere to hide. Elliott does a great job picking the best barrels of recipe OBSV for the Single Barrel release at 100 proof.

I was happy to taste the Single Barrel for the first time in some years. My overwhelming first impression was shock that this was 100 proof, as it didn't taste hot or burny in any way — just lots of robust, round flavor. I have limited success with picking out things that liquor brands' tasting notes point out, and the nose was slight, but I did get the pear note they suggested, along with something a bit more floral, such as lychee or elderflower. The taste was silky smooth and complex. I got big notes of woodiness, cherries and figs, and warm caramel, à la Werther's Original. I also vaguely caught the teeniest bit of mint or menthol...but I'd need to have another taste or twelve to be sure. The finish was long and rich, and some spiciness and pepper emerged near the end, from that 35% backbone of rye. (I actually was surprised I didn't get a bit more pepper from the rye. I think I need another taste.) This is really a wonderful bourbon, and spectacular value for money — you can pick up a bottle in NYC for around $40 right now.

And then to make things really interesting, Four Roses also releases Limited Editions of various recipes and small batch blends. The company also works with liquor stores and bars to let them select their own barrel. They're also very up front about what goes into these; for instance, their current 130th Anniversary 2018 Limited Edition Small Batch has a 10-year-old OBSV, a 13-year-old OBSF, a 14-year-old OESV, and a 16-year-old OESK. No proportions given, but this tells you an awful lot about what's in the bottle. (I did not see this one available for tasting the other night, which makes sense given how limited it is. But it sounds delicious.)

Actually, as PUNCH notes in this fascinating article, Four Roses is so transparent that Elliott is known to answer emails asking for the proportions and the recipes! They don't mind consumers trying to recreate their blends; after all, they're selling more whiskey that way.

The company also releases Single Barrel bottlings — at barrel strength! — of each of its ten whiskey recipes. The bottle at left was a very nice Christmas gift for me a couple years ago, and it is delicious. I really like that Four Roses tells you everything from the age to the recipe to the bottling date...and they even tell you which warehouse the barrel came from, what side of the warehouse it was in, the rack number (out of 180 racks per warehouse), the tier the barrel rested on, and a letter code for depth into the row. No one else shares as much information; Four Roses knows their geeks! (For instance: this bottle shot from BreakingBourbon.com's review shows that their particular bottle's barrel was in Warehouse P, on the North side, on rack #39, on the first tier, and the third barrel deep on the row.)

Fast-forward seven years to 1997, when a liquor-importing company in New York named Chatham Imports bought the disused Michter's trademark and started releasing bourbon and rye under the Michter's name. (Just to reiterate, "new Michter's" has no relationship at all with any "old Michter's" released before 1990, though it's in their interest to blur the lines a little for marketing reasons.) The "new Michter's" is contract-distilled by a distillery that Michter's won't name (which is a fairly common practice, and doesn't bother me unless companies lie about it, which Michter's isn't doing.) I asked Chatham Imports president Joe Magliocco point-blank once where their juice comes from and he refused to answer, only smiling enigmatically when I specifically brought up Heaven Hill and Brown-Forman.

"New Michter's" employs a master distiller and a master of maturation -- both women, which is unusual in the industry -- and built a distillery and warehouses near Louisville, though they only started distilling two years ago and the whiskey won't be ready for a few more years. Their team does a superb job, though, at keeping tabs on their contract-distilled whiskey, carefully controlling the maturation process, and choosing exactly when to bottle and release their expressions. I'm not as big a fan of their "US*1" brand by and large, but it's certainly decent (you can find better value elsewhere), though their premium Michter's releases are very good indeed. They release bourbons and ryes at various ages, and they've released some no-age-statement toasted-barrel and "sour mash" bourbons as well.

Which brings me to what's in my glass: This is the 2018 release of their 10 Year Old Single Barrel bourbon, which is very nice indeed. (Michter's was kind enough to send me a sample.) It's peppery and a little hot off the top (this was bottled at 94.4 proof/47.2% abv) but has some nice vanilla-laden oakiness immediately following. This doesn't taste like it's ten years old; I wondered if this is actually twelve or fourteen years. (With most whiskeys, age statements have to denote the youngest whiskey in the bottle, so a blend of a ten-year, a twelve-year, and a sixteen-year can only legally be labeled as ten years old -- but with a single barrel expression, we know that everything in a given bottle came from a single barrel with a definite age.) Does Michter's release several different single barrel whiskeys under the 10 Year brand, some older, but keep the label the same out of expediency? We'll never know.

The whiskey continues to unfold on the palate, bringing in dried fruit and baking spices. (One review I read suggested "burnt orange peel" which seems exactly right, for the caramelized-fruit note and slight bitterness.) It's fairly dry, however, and feels a little thinner than some of their other expressions. In the glass with a big crystal-clear ice sphere, it appears more viscous, though, with some legs/beads near the bottom underneath the rock. The peppery zing returns once again for a continued dry finish. Wonder what the rye percentage is?

I've seen recommendations to pair this bourbon with a cigar, which I'm sure would be great if I smoked them or knew anything about them. It's certainly a nice whiskey to sip slowly as it unfolds with the ice. It may be sacrilege to some given that this is a single barrel release and not terribly cheap, but it also makes a decent Manhattan, particularly with a richer vermouth such as Carpano Antica Formula, which is a vanilla bomb itself.

April 13, 2016

If you go to the show, as my pal Helen did, you're confronted with this list of official cocktails. Clearly, the Founder's Fizz is the best option, but the list is kind of uninspiring. (Sierra Mist? Sour apple liqueur? Jack Daniel's for a Manhattan?) You can do better, even if you don't tip as well as Amy Schumer.

This got me thinking about Revolutionary-era drinks, and what kinds of things Alexander Hamilton himself and his cohorts may have enjoyed. And drink they did: in 1790, the average American drank about thirty-four gallons of beer or cider, a gallon of wine, and five gallons of distilled spirits. By 1830, average annual alcohol consumption in America for every man, woman, and child over the age of 15 was about seven gallons of pure alcohol – the equivalent of ninety bottles of 80-proof liquor, or about four shots per person per day – more triple the current rate of alcohol consumption. (Dodgy water supplies often meant that beer or other alcoholic beverages were safer to drink.) Everyone in colonial America was likely at the very least slightly buzzed, all of the time.

John Hancock made most of his fortune by importing smuggling molasses, rum, tea, tobacco, and Madeira to the colonies. In June 1768, British customs officials seized his sloop Liberty because he paid duty on 25 casks of Madeira, while the ship could hold four times as many. The Sons of Liberty incited an angry mob which rioted in Boston, burned a customs official's boat, and called for a boycott of British products. Hancock was fined £9000 (or more than $1.9 million today) and had to forfeit his ship, but he retained John Adams as counsel and the charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence.

Yes, thatJohn Adams. He drank hard cider before breakfast and three glasses of Madeira every night before bed. In the difficult summer of 1777 (so difficult that he noted that punch was up to twenty shillings a bowl), he wrote to Abigail that "whiskey is used here instead of rum, and I don't see but it is just as good."

Martha Washington, who was regarded as the consummate hostess, traveled to be with George at each of the Continental Army's winter encampments, including the one at Morristown, NJ during the harsh winter of 1779-80. The officers held fancy-dress dances on February 23, March 1 and April 24, 1780. Washington and 34 other officers ponied up $400 each for these parties, and of course our hero A. Ham met Elizabeth Schuyler that winter. (thoseletters!) Martha Washington records a good recipe for rum punch in her diaries, though we don't know if it was served during these parties.

I couldn't dig up any hard information on Hamilton's drinking activities, and I don't get the sense he was much of a drinker. Indeed, in Federalist No. 12, he advocated a tax on spirits, and said that if that tax "should tend to diminish the consumption of it, such an effect would be equally favorable to the agriculture, to the economy, to the morals, and to the health of the society. There is, perhaps, nothing so much a subject of national extravagance as these spirits." This proposed tax was enacted as the Distilled Spirits Tax of 1791, which sparked the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.

It is conjectured, that the price of this precious liquor will soon rise at Claverack, since a certain candidate has placed in his account of Loss and Gain, the following items", then going on to list "720 rum grogs, 17 brandy ditto, 32 gin-slings, 411 glasses bitters, 25 glasses cock-tail," and "My Election" under the "Loss" column, with "NOTHING" under "Gain." Ouch. All that booze spent in electioneering, and the poor Democratic-Republican candidate couldn't win.

Not content to just rub it in once, the next issue of The Balancefeatured a letter to the editor (well, at least a letter. I wonder if Harry Croswell, the editor, wrote it himself, given the tone. It feels like Croswell's showing off, or asking himself a question so he could publish the answer) asking what in the world was meant by "cocktail":

Sir, I observe in your paper of the 6th instant, in the account of a democratic candidate for a seat in the legislature, marked under the head of Loss, 25 do. cock-tail. Will you be so obliging as to inform me what is meant by this species of refreshment? Though a stranger to you, I believe, from your general character, you will not suppose this request to be impertinent. I have heard of a jorum, of phlegm-cutter and fog driver, of wetting the whistle, of moistening the clay, of a fillip, a spur in the head, quenching a spark in the throat, of flip &c, but never in my life, though I have lived a good many years, did I hear of cock tail before. Is it peculiar to a part of this country? Or is it a late invention? Is the name expressive of the effect which the drink has on a particular part of the body? Or does it signify that the democrats who take the potion are turned topsyturvy, and have their heads where their tails should be? I should think the latter to be the real solution; but am unwilling to determine finally until I receive all the information in my power. At the beginning of the revolution, a physician publicly recommended the moss which grew on a tree as a substitute for tea. He found on experiment, that it had more of a stimulating quality than he approved; and therefore, he afterwards as publicly denounced it. Whatever cock tail is, it may be properly administered only at certain times and to certain constitutions. A few years ago, when the democrats were bawling for Jefferson and Clinton, one of the polls was held in the city of New York at a place where ice-cream was sold. Their temperament then was remarkably adust and bilious. Something was necessary to cool them. Now when they are sunk into rigidity, it might be equally necessary, by cock-tail to warm and rouse them. I hope you will construe nothing that I have said as disrespectful. I read your paper with great pleasure and wish it the most extensive circulation. Whether you answer my inquiry or not, I shall still remain, Yours, A SUBSCRIBER

Did you catch the gibes aimed at "democrats" and at Jefferson and [DeWitt] Clinton? The editor, Harry Croswell, responded immediately below this letter:

[As I make it a point, never to publish anything (under my editorial head) but which I can explain, I shall not hesitate to gratify the curiosity of my inquisitive correspondent:– Cock tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of Spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters–it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said also, to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because, a person having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else. Edit. Bal.]

Wow. So not only does the editor neatly define the word we're most interested in here, he manages to smack around his political opponents with some style at the same time.

Another fun tidbit or three: Harry Croswell was a staunch Federalist who started editing the Balance in 1801 when he moved to Hudson. When rival editor and Jeffersonian Charles Holt started up the fiercely Democratic-Republican Hudson Bee the next year (Jefferson was a paying subscriber), Croswell responded by starting a small paper ("printed in the Garret of The Balance") called "The Wasp", "because a wasp often stings a bee." The September 9, 1802 issue of the Wasp got Croswell in some trouble, after he reported a charge from the New York Post (don't forget who founded that paper) that Jefferson had paid fellow Virginian and scandalmonger James Thompson Callender -- a nasty character who had earlier leaked the story of Hamilton's affair with Maria Reynolds -- to attack the Adams Administration and impugn the late George Washington. The New York attorney general, who Croswell also attacked in the same issue of the Wasp, prosecuted him on libel and sedition charges, and Croswell was convicted of publishing the statements. (Croswell was represented pro bono by, among others, William P. Van Ness...who would later serve as Burr's second for his duel with Hamilton.) For his appeal, Croswell was represented by none but our hero A. Ham, who delivered such a powerful exhortation that truth was an absolute defense to a libel claim that the principle was written into New York state law and the New York Constitution, and remains a bedrock principle of First Amendment law.)

History is so cool.

But how best to commemorate his life in liquid form? Especially if you don't want to serve up Brandy Alexander Hamiltons? I really liked the sound of the "My Shot" cocktail from Good Food Stories. It sounds wonderful, and it's made up of spirits that were popular during his era: applejack (which one of Washington's New Jersey-based soldiers Robert Laird distilled, and whose ancestors still make Laird's Applejack), pimento dram, whiskey, rum, and cider (from the Aaron Burr Cidery.) Mmmmm. Good Food Stories also posted a Schuyler Sisters cocktail, with ingredients chosen to reflect the personalities of the three sisters depicted in the show. (!) You could even drink them out of dueling shot glasses.

For the release yesterday of the #Hamiltome (aka Lin-Manuel Miranda's new book "Hamilton: The Revolution"), the good people at my excellent local independent bookstore, the Astoria Bookshop, asked me to come up with an appropriate and historically accurate tipple for their party. After some research, I came up with "Whiskey Rebellion Punch", an update of Jerry Thomas's "Canadian Punch" from the 1862 edition of "How To Mix Drinks", the first bartending book published in the United States. As always with old recipes, and especially pre-Prohibition ones, and even more so with Punch, I let David Wondrich's sagacity and advice be my guide.

Whiskey Rebellion Punch

3 bottles 100-proof rye whiskey (I used Rittenhouse. If you have cask-strength whiskey, go with the proportions of whiskey and water given above.)

Slice the pineapple and the lemons thinly, and place them in a pot with the spirits. Cover and let infuse overnight (without squeezing the fruit.) Make a simple syrup with 12 oz. sugar and 12 oz. water (which will result in about 20 oz. of the 1:1 syrup) and set aside. (If you need to transport it, take the fruit out with a slotted spoon and put it in a quart-size food storage bag, and bottle the infused spirits in the bottles you emptied.) To serve, mix the fruit, the infused spirits, the simple syrup, and the seltzer together, and slip in a large ice block. Garnish each serving with a piece of the pineapple and a slice of lemon, and do not throw away your shot.

May 11, 2015

SF Girl By Bay hosted a cocktail contest a couple months back, along with Women & Whiskies, and we thought we'd try our hand at an original recipe. The contest showcased Glen Grant's The Major's Reserve single-malt Scotch, which is an interesting ingredient to work with. You don't see too many Scotch cocktails, typically; the peaty, smoky maltiness and heathery floral flavors characterizing Scotch can get lost in some drinks, and I typically drink my single malts neat or with a dram of spring water. (If I were to make a list of Scotch cocktails that spring to mind, I'd reel off the Rusty Nail, the Rob Roy, the Penicillin, the Blood and Sand...and then I'd have to stop and think for a while.)

We tried several different directions for this one, but we arrived at one that was kind of a cross between a Rob Roy (itself a Scotch Manhattan) and an Improved Whiskey Cocktail. Aromatic, with layers of flavor, this concoction pulls out the apple and vanilla notes from the single malt whisky.

Where'd My Glasgow?

2oz. Glen Grant The Major's Reserve single-malt Scotch whisky

1/2 oz. Noilly Prat sweet vermouth

2 tsp Maraschino liqueur (we used Maraska)

dash Bittercube cherry bark vanilla bitters

Stir and strain into a double Old-Fashioned glass with an ice ball, and garnish with a cocktail cherry.

September 17, 2014

All of us cocktailians -- and drinkers generally -- have a common hero. More than Harry Craddock, or Jimmy Russell, or Donn Beach, or even Jerry Thomas. No, who we really should bow down to is good ol' Ethyl Alcohol, which lubricates social situations, makes us feel great if we use it right, and has even saved our lives.

That's one of the big points that Anthony Caporale makes in his Off-Off-Broadway show The Imbible: A Spirited History of Drinking, now playing Friday nights through October 3 at the Huron Club at the SoHo Playhouse. The production was mounted for the New York Fringe Festival, and it was one of 13 successful plays chosen out of 220 or so for an additional run as part of the FringeNYC Encore Series. I went this past Friday night and had a grand time. Imagine a lecture on the 10,000-year history of alcohol...but with jokes, callouts to audience members, live demos, visual aids, original songs, goofy costumes, and The Backwaiters -- a trio of a cappella singer/actors who contribute harmonies in styles from barbershop to disco. It's rollicking, charming, and delivers a ton of information on my favorite subject without taking itself seriously, so it all adds up to an enormously enjoyable evening out. It's a fantastic value, too -- for your $21 ticket you get three cocktails thrown in as well. (Where else can you get three drinks for $21 in SoHo on a Friday night, to say nothing of the history lesson and a show?) The history is solid, and so's the entertainment.

Cocktailians: You have theater experience in your background -- what made you think of combining theater and booze?

Anthony Caporale: It's funny because the theater part predates the booze parts. I started acting when I was eight years old. I always tell people the reason I got into bartending was because I was acting...I had a mechanical engineering degree that I wasn't thrilled to use, and started out working in a restaurant, and got behind the bar after a month or so. I always tell people that I felt like from that point on, it was a Broadway play that I could perform every night -- and I only had to audition once to get cast. For me, that's what bartending has always been about. That two-month summer job turned into a lifetime of bartending full-time, even when I was working in engineering.

What I really enjoy is teaching and training people. I got into helping people open restaurants: I've opened probably close to two dozen restaurants, from mom & pop places up to $14 million operations like [Brinker International's] Maggiano's. The longer I spend in this field, the more I see that you really have to view the whole thing as entertainment. The biggest companies -- the Disneys, the TGI Friday's, et cetera -- they all get that the experience they're delivering is entertainment, but the product can vary. It can be food, movies, whatever...but they all see that what people want is the entertainment.

I'm the national brand ambassador for Drambuie, and when I started going around the country and doing lectures, what I realized was that the best presentations were the most theatrical, when I incorporated comedy and made it high-energy. I've been involved in theater companies in New York for 15 years or so, and started a theater company a couple years ago focusing on new plays. A friend who is a theater producer saw my Manhattan Cocktail Classic presentation and said, "Anthony, I think you have a show here." Everybody wants to know as much as they can about cocktails and spirits, and so four years later, my associate producer and I tried to get it into the Fringe Festival this year. We spent three insane months producing two full-length shows for the Fringe Festival, and I've been absolutely blown away by peoples' reaction. We've sold out every show so far, and we're looking at our eighth straight sold-out show. We got four stars in Time Out, our photo on the cover of the New York Times Arts section -- I just about fell over.

May 16, 2014

I used to never order an Old-Fashioned when going out to a bar, because I never knew what I'd get -- an inch-thick paste of smashed fruit goo at the bottom? A glass brimming with seltzer? (or worse, Sprite?) -- and that was kind of like the Bad Old Days of drinks literature, when you had to sift through umpteen badly-edited lists of crummy recipes to find one or two books that rose above the Mr. Boston standard. Nowadays, of course, with the explosion of quality bars and general heightened interest in all things cocktailian these days, there are plenty of places where I feel comfortable walking in and confidently ordering an Old-Fashioned, knowing that I'll get a well-made, tasty drink. Similarly, there's a myriad of interesting cocktail books around, and it's been fascinating to watch them go from catchall collections of recipes to reprints of classics to more intensely specialized books narrowly focusing on a particular historical period, a bar, a locale, a category of drinks, or even a particular drink itself.

Robert Simonson's "The Old-Fashioned: The Story of the World's First Classic Cocktail, with Recipes & Lore" (Ten Speed, $18.99), is one of the latter, of course. It delves deeply into the history of the titular drink, and presents dozens of variations. Simonson's writing is precise and poetic: "When properly made according to its original specifications, the Old-Fashioned's amber glow is no longer obscured by phosphorescent refugees from the produce department." The first section of the book is a well-observed history of how the drink we know as the Old-Fashioned evolved. That was one of my first surprises, as I'd always thought the Old-Fashioned was a relic from the nineteenth century (Simonson describes it as "the primordial cocktail"), unchanged since the days of Jerry Thomas. Rather, it evolved, slowly and incrementally, into what we expect today. Did you know that the original garnish for the drink was a miniature spoon, or that it was originally consumed as a fast morning pick-me-up?

Simonson writes for the New York Times, which has dubbed him "Our Man in the Liquor-Soaked Trenches." In the book, he loads us up with colorful stories and quotes from tons of sources to spin his yarns, including some now-forgotten bar guides and old newspapers from Brooklyn, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and one admirably cranky letter to the Times in 1936. He considers various claims to the title of the drink's inventor, and dismisses Col. Jim Gray's (who added nutmeg, didn't have bitters, and shook the drink) and the Pendennis Club's (which is thinly sourced and historically problematic.) And he takes us through the Fruit Wars -- the rise and fall of the orange wheel/cherries/pineapple (!) garnish and what various bartenders did with them. (A few years ago, I ordered an Old-Fashioned before dinner at Mandina's. The waiter immediately asked me the question "With or without the garbage?") In sidebars, Simonson also addresses the Mad Men effect (I don't love how Don Draper mixes his drink) and the pecularity that is the Wisconsin-styleBrandy Old-Fashioned, which as a Wisconsinite himself he's eminently qualified to do.

A brief note on gear and technique follows, and then we're on to the recipes. After the standard and historical recipes which were described in the first section, we move on to the many creative variations on the drink. Simonson observes that the Old-Fashioned lends itself especially well to tinkering, especially with all the kinds of sweeteners, flavored syrups, and bitters available these days. Don Lee's groundbreaking bacon-infused Benton's Old-Fashioned from PDT is included, as is Phil Ward's magical Oaxaca Old-Fashioned from Death & Co. (And I can't wait to try the Clint Eastwood by Mike Ryan from Chicago's Violet Hour, Chris Hannah's Rebennack from the French 75 in New Orleans, or the New Ceremony from Tonia Guffey at Dram in Brooklyn; they all look fantastic.) Simonson even offers up a couple recipes of his own devising, including a bourbon-and-Perique Old-Fashioned that is yet another reason I want to get my hands on a couple bottles of that stuff.

The book is well-designed, too, with many pages of absolutely gorgeous photography (by Daniel Krieger) of the drinks, equipment, and bartenders, taken in bars around New York. I've been carrying around the book for the past couple of days while I write this review, and the cover shot makes my mouth water. I also like the comfortable dimensions (8" x 5 1/2") and jacketless hardback approach. There's a good and useful index, the endpapers are marbled, and the whole package just feels solid, attractive, and well thought out. I found a couple copy-editing nitpicks (and the page for the Rum Old-Fashioned specifies English Harbour rum and a lime twist, while the photo depicts El Dorado 12 and an orange), but they're exceedingly minor and don't detract from the book.

All in all, this is a great look at "the grandfather of them all." The Old-Fashioned is definitely worthy of a high-quality book exploring its history, continuing significance, and future, and that book has arrived.

(Thanks to Ten Speed Press and Robert Simonson for sending me a review copy.)